You can't take the sky from me

Things get crashy

29

SEP/12

TODO: Finish wiring up links

The view from the shuttle cockpit was reasonably impressive. As the shuttle crested the ridge, a bowl-shaped valley opened up between the dusty red mountains that characterize this part of Minos. Nearly in the center, light reflected off the single tower of the tiny spaceport where the Aces and Eights was berthed. All of the party had elected to visit the town of Durmin as part of a supply run, and the shuttle was now packed with supplies to make the next few weeks of space voyaging both survivable and enjoyable. Since the party had parted ways with the Aces and Eights in orbit and agreed to meet Captain Mallorn here, it was a minor relief to see the familiar gray curve of their ship’s hull parked on the spaceport’s single large landing pad, now only a few miles away.

“Suddenly, A burst of cannon fire across the nose of the shuttle startled everyone, and a small kitfighter zooms past the cockpit. A voice crackles over the radio: “You’re entering a restricted area. Turn around immediately!”

The party informed the fighter that they were returning to their ship, and the fighter instructed them to go into a holding pattern while it verified this information. A couple of things became clear: all radio transmission attempts were being jammed, and despite the tone of the warning, this was NOT part of the official local air force. The guy piloting the shuttle, Neil Lovell, decided to risks making a break for the spaceport and home. The kitfighter pursued, opening fire, trying to draw a bead on the surprisingly nimble shuttle. As the shuttle approached the spaceport, a light from the Aces and Eights began flashing in Morse code: “SIEGEGETAWAY.”

After a hurried discussion, the party concluded that if there was a siege on the ship, they were better off not sticking themselves in the middle of it. Neil pulled the shuttle into a split-S maneuver, sending it skimming along the surface back in the direction they’d come. The kitfighter continued its pursuit, guns blazing away (although it had not yet managed to do serious damage). Neil decided to try something risky: he spun the shuttle around mid-air, blasting the throttle, and attempting to nullify current forward velocity and ram the kitfighter. The kitfighter barely managed to evade… then came around for another pass on the now-immobile shuttle. Another burst of gunfire found its mark, sending the shuttle sliding out of the air and down to a crash landing.

Thanks to Neil’s excellent piloting and the miracle of safety harnesses, nobody was hurt… but the kitfighter was coming around for another pass. Doctor Ivan attempted to rig the engines to explode, but failed, and the party all dived away from the shuttle as the kitfighter strafed it once more, lighting up an engine and causing a massive explosion. The party hid in the low scrub brush covering this part of the terrain, and apparently the kitfighter didn’t see them: after circling a couple more times to verify that its target was destroyed, it flew back towards the spaceport.

The party started to make their way to the spaceport on foot (about a mile away). They noticed a jeep coming towards them and the crash site… apparently someone had decided an on-foot inspection was in order. They moved off to the side, hoping to avoid attention, but some footprints apparently caught the eyes of the men in the jeep. Before they had long to investigate, half the party simply opened fire from where they were hidden in the bushes, and the men in the jeep dived behind it to take cover. During the ensuing firefight, Doctor Ivan (who had once driven the exact same model of jeep and knew exactly where to aim) shot a hole in the gas tank and used it to start a fire, and Granny Tea carefully aimed under the jeep to shoot one of the unfortunate foe’s feet out from underneath him with her shotgun. Rose, meanwhile, managed to somehow jam BOTH her pistols at the same time. Again.

The fight ended with a two foes down, no casualties, and a burning jeep sending a pillar of black smoke into the sky (nicely matching the one from the shuttle). One of the men in the jeep was still alive, although unconscious and gravely wounded.

At this point, the spaceport is less than a mile away, its metallic walls gleaming in the sunshine. Slightly closer and a few hundred yards from the spaceport, there’s a paddock with a handful of horses (always a reliable and cheap form of transportation where there’s plenty of land around) and a stable.